Piles, pants, and poker

The past couple of weeks I've been dealing with one of the most annoying things about living in the Netherlands (aside from women who insist on wearing too-short pants; that style is done. DONE!): pile driving. Every time a building is constructed here, many piles - long, wooden poles like those that hold up piers - have to be driven into the ground to support the building and keep it from sinking into the soggy swamp that this country is. Since this is done with a big machine using hydraulics or something, it creates a lot of noise that echoes around whole neighbourhoods. The pile driving going on near us is about 3 streets away, with many houses between us and the construction site, but the noise still winds its way to our bedroom, which is fortunately facing away from the direction of the sound. The workers, being the morning people that they always seem to be, start the pounding between 7 and 7:30 every morning. I normally get up at about 8:30. So there's been many mornings where my last hour or so of sleep is very on and off as I would doze off when they stopped for a bit, but then I would wake up when they started again. I would try to tell myself that it's really not that loud, because it's not, but once my mind got annoyed by it, there was no trying to ignore the sound. It doesn't help that there are actually two sites where they are building new houses and each one has two pile driving machines, so the noise increases while the chances for a silent break decrease. This week, since I'm already losing enough sleep because I have been having a hard time getting back to sleep at other points during the night, I decided to put in some earplugs when the machines started. Bit drastic, but it does the job. At the same time though O has been on a training this week and actually leaves the house before I'm up, so he has to try to say goodbye to me while I can't hear him. I also worry about not hearing my alarm clock, but so far it's gone well.

Last weekend I bought some very much needed new clothes for work and one thing I really needed was a new pair of dress pants. I found an ok pair at We, which I've never really shopped at before. A couple of nights later I was trying them on again at home and I bent over a bit, it really wasn't that far!, and a hole ripped in the back seam. Way to make me feel not fat. It ripped so easily though, which hardly surprises me since I tried on a different pair in the store and one of the belt loops came unattached at one end when I barely touched it. I doubt I'll be going back there again.

I learned how to properly play some poker last night and it was really fun, though I lost fairly early. This guy invited people over to his house to teach poker to those who didn't really know how to play it. There was a group of about 11 of us and after the rules and a couple of practice rounds, we started a tournament where you dropped out if you ran out of money. We weren't playing for big money of course, we each only put in 5 euros. I lost a lot of my money on a hand that wasn't quite good enough, and I was just about doomed to be the first person out. But then I managed to win on my last hand so I got enough money back to stay in for a few more hands. I hope to get the chance to play again, it is quite addictive.